Actress Lindsay Lohan has become the latest celebrity to be accused and fined by the United States regulator this Wednesday for promoting crypto assets on social networks, without disclosing that it was legal or receiving compensation.
Lohan is one of eight celebrities, including singer Austin Mahone, boxer Jake Paul, four rappers and a porn actress, accused of promoting the rights of crypto assets Tronix (TRX) and BitTorrent (BTT), the Securities and Exchange Commission announced. (SEC, in English).
In addition to Mahone, the singer and one of the Rappers -Soulja Boy- the defendants agreed to more than 40 thousand dollars to settle the case without admitting or denying guilt.
A businessman who pays celebrities has more serious problems: Justin Sun, the owner of Tron, BitTorrent and Rainberry platforms, is accused of orchestrating the concealment of the sponsored promotion and manipulating the market to inflate the TRX trading volume.
The SEC indicates that between 2018 and 2019, Sun ordered its employees to make some 600,000 illegal TRX transactions between its two platforms to artificially create volume and also sold the crypto asset on the secondary market without registration, pocketing 31 million coins.
The regulator’s lawsuit alleges that Sun and his team offered and sold TRX and BTT as an investment through a pyramid “program,” in which they arranged to promote crypto assets on social networks, BitTorrent accounts in exchange for receiving more crypto assets, and recruiting others on Telegram and Discord channels.
SEC Chairman Gary Gensler, who has slammed other such legal actions in recent months, said the case is a new example of “the high risk we face when crypto securities are offered without transparency.”
Previously, the regulator has imposed penalties on two celebrities who are promoted in the illegal crypto asset EMAX: Kim Kardashian had to pay $1.26 million, and NBA player Paul Pierce had to pay $1.4 million.
